the skeptic or the mystic can know of their existence only by traveling
over the pathway himself; for in the world of the inner life nothing
can be known by hearsay. If, then, he would really know that the road
to theoretical insight into beauty is impassable, let him travel with
us and see; or, if not with us, alone by himself or with some one wiser
than we as guide; let him compare fairly and sympathetically the results
of theoretical analysis and construction with the data of his firsthand
experience and observe whether the one is or is not adequate to the
other.

Again, the cleft between thought and feeling, even subtle and fleeting
aesthetic feeling, is not so great as the mystics suppose. For, after
all, there is a recognizable identity and permanence even in these
feelings; we should never call them by a common name or greet them as
the same despite their shiftings from moment to moment if this were
not true. Although whatever is unique in each individual experience
of beauty, its distinctive flavor or nuance, cannot be adequately
rendered in thought, but can only be felt; yet whatever each new
experience has in common with the old, whatever is universal in all
aesthetic experiences, can be formulated. The relations of beauty,
too, its place in the whole of life, can be discovered by thought
alone; for only by thought can we hold on to the various things whose
relations we are seeking to establish; without thought our experience
falls asunder into separate bits and never attains to unity. Finally,
the mystics forget that the life of thought and the life of feeling
have a common root; they are both parts of the one life of the mind
and so cannot be foreign to each other.

The motive impelling to any kind of undertaking is usually complex,
and that which leads to the development of aesthetic theory is no